The Better Plan
by Dame March Dolcetto
Summary: The Hero has a plan. Tomix doesn't like it. Shipping is involved. (set in Book 3)


He respects the Hero greatly, he really does. She was easily one of his best friends, one of the greatest adventurers he'd ever had the pleasure of fighting alongside, and a true Hero in every sense of the word. However, there were times when he really does wonder whether or not that respect was misplaced.

A cold slab of steak swung on its hook toward him as the ship swayed beneath his feet and he only barely manages to duck in time to avoid its meaty slap. He'd been ducking steak slaps for the past hour now. It wouldn't be long before he could claim to have been dodging them for the past two hours.

"You okay, there?"

Unlike him, the Hero was completely unaffected by the swaying of the ship, potential slaps from steaks included. Sitting in an unruffled lotus position, she levitated a good few feet over the ground, her hands folded primly on her lap, sheathed daggers dangling off her waist, the tips of their scabbards just barely scraping the wooden floor of the ship. A faint lilac light pulsed about her head, forming a sort of halo around her hair, that halo being the only sign she showed of her position requiring any sort of actual effort. She had been sitting in that fashion ever since they'd boarded the ship and he has to wonder whether she'd chosen to go as a Cryptic on this quest solely for the ability to levitate as they voyaged over the seas.

As the ship crested a wave, the floor swayed beneath his feet, making him lose his balance and sending him crashing against the ship wall for what had to be the fifth time this hour before only barely managing to ward off another slap from a dangling steak by smacking it aside with the flat of a hastily transformed-hand blade.

As for the Hero, she only had to look at it, the steak swinging its way towards her in hopes of giving her a meaty slap, and it stopped a good foot away from her, the whole of it glowing the faintest lilac. With a dainty flick of her finger, she set it back to its original position, not once moving from her spot above the ground.

Yes… he really does wonder.

"Hero…" he has to say. "How did you get us into this mess?"

"Hey, hey, _hey,_ this isn't a mess, Tomix," she protests. "Everything's going according to plan."

The two of them were sitting alone in the storage room of a vessel belonging to a merchant's guild, one set to deliver a shipment of meats for Edelia's cafeterias. All around them were meats of every variety, from massive slabs of steaks hanging from hooks to gigantic crates filled with sausages. There were even crates with more exotic meats and cuts, from boxes filled with what he was fairly sure were hearts of some sort, to little, individually packaged containers filled with brains. The air around them was bitingly cold, most likely to ensure the freshness of the goods the vessel was bound to deliver. He'd only been here for an hour and already, he was starting to feel his toes grow numb in their boots. At least he didn't have any fingers to lose.

"According to plan?" He looks at her with disbelief just as the ship crested a particularly large wave, the sudden motion sending both him, and the steaks, crashing to the ground, him knocked off balance and the steaks knocked loose off their hooks.

He glares at her through steak on his head, vision somewhat obscured by the slab of beef now covering one of his eyes. "Your plan involves us being covered in steaks?"

"…details, details," she says airily, waving a hand in his direction, lifting the steaks off him and back onto their hooks with Cryptic telekinesis. "Relax."

He shakes out his coat, loosing yet more stray bits of meat from his earlier steak burial. "Details," he says flatly.

She gives him a smile before returning those fallen meat bits into their respective containers with another wave of Cryptic telekinesis. "Details," she repeats.

"Hero, when you said you had a plan to get us to Tkaanie, _this –_ " he gestures to their surroundings, to the slabs of meat on their hooks and crates of sausages stacked high about them – "Was not what I had in mind."

The stare she gave him, in return, was equally flat. "What you had in mind was a rowboat."

He flushes despite himself. "Look, making the Void Ship isn't going to be cheap; I didn't have a lot of options." Then, having regained some of his composure, he continued: "You're the Hero here. You said you could get us a ride to Tkaanie _no problem."_

"And I did!" she exclaims, holding out her arms and nearly knocking her own dragon loose from his place on her shoulders. "Look, we're already on board on a ship to Tkaanie and it only took me a couple of hours of talking with the shipmasters. Honestly, I don't see what's such a big deal about all this."

He stares at her. "You _disguised_ us as boxes of sausages and snuck us on board when no one was looking!"

She stares right back. "So? I paid good money to have us on board!"

"You paid good money to have _two boxes of sausages_ shipped to Edelia!"

"That's still money I had to pull out from my dragon's food budget," she retorts, massaging the bridge of her nose seconds after her outburst. "Heavens knows just how much that costs per year. Honestly, what were you expecting? Free passage over the seas or something?"

He stares. " _Yes."_

She snorts. "Heroes have to pay, just like everyone else does."

"You took down a dragon who ate the sun and saved the world from eternal darkness."

She shrugs. "Capitalism," she says simply.

He looks at her. " _Really?_ " and he really does have to ask.

She nods. "Yep." Then, after a few moments' consideration, she adds: "I could probably get us free rooms at most inns, though."

His hand phases through his face when he tries to massage the bridge of his nose but, still, it helps. He grinds the edge of one stump against the skin of his forehead, breathing in through his mouth as he does so, before asking with a very deliberate calm: "Why did you have to disguise us as sausages?"

"Transporting meat's cheaper than people."

"I'd have never guessed," he says dryly. "You couldn't afford to pay for us as _people_?"

She gave him a nonchalant shrug. "If you can save, you should save," she says firmly. "Basic Heroing 101."

"We're in a _freezer."_

She looked unimpressed. "So?"

"I'm freezing!"

Her head snaps up so that she could meet his gaze, her eyes finding his. "Hey, I have massive amounts of trauma from being encased in an ice block for five years and you don't see _me_ complaining."

He blinks.

 _Oh._

A second after her outburst, her cheeks began to burn red and she looks away, obviously embarrassed.

A few seconds pass.

She mumbles something about the weather which he could only barely hear. Her voice dies out after less than a second.

He suddenly really wants for the boat to sway, for him to get knocked onto the floor again or slapped by a steak or – or for the whole boat itself to just hit a rock and capsize. Anything to get out of this awkwardness.

Another few seconds pass.

Her dragon nuzzles her chin, now attuned to fire. His now-hot scales steamed in the cold air. Without looking at Tomix, she strokes his snout with one hand.

Unable to stand the impasse any longer, he coughs, bringing up a hand to scratch at the back of his head with the edges of one of his stumps, before speaking:

"… I'm, uh… sorry. I didn't, ah …realize you were, um..."

She looked to find the whole thing as awkward as he did. "It's, uh… it's fine. I shouldn't have pulled that card…"

"It's alright, I should have known you… freezers… ah… are you okay?" he has to ask.

She flashes him an embarrassed look. "Tomix," she says.

He raises his hands. "Sorry."

Then, perhaps a tad obviously, he blurts out: "If your plan was for us to travel like _this,_ we should've just gone with my plan!"

"Your plan was a rowboat!" she burst out, looking immensely relieved. "If we'd gone with your plan, we'd be rowing a boat across the ocean. Rowing a _rowboat_ to the next _continent."_

 _"_ _It would've worked!"_ Probably. Most likely.

 _"_ _You don't have hands!"_ she bursts out. Then, giving him an accusing look, she continued: "You would've made me do all the rowing, wouldn't you?!"

"I would've helped! …kind of." He really does have to be honest; focusing his hands into corporeality for that long likely would've been damned exhausting. "Look, you're the Hero here, aren't you supposed to help those in need willingly and without complaint?"

She looked unimpressed. "Hey, quoting a _Hero's Guide to Heroing_ isn't going to change the fact that you would've asked me to row us all the way over to the next _continent."_

It was worth a shot, he thinks in her direction before saying aloud: "You're a Cryptic. You could've kept the boat moving with just your _mind."_

One eyebrow of hers suddenly found itself barely an inch below her hairline. "Do you know how much a headache that would be?" she asks. "I have enough trouble just launching my daggers at people from farther than a few feet away. I'd probably shatter my own brain trying to keep a boat moving all the way over to the next continent."

"Weak minds, I suppose."

The ship, once again, swayed beneath his feet and, once again, he was sent crashing to the ground, banging his head against the wall on the way there. At the very least, he was not slapped by a steak this time around.

The look she was giving him was amused and sympathetic in equal amounts. "You totally deserved that."

Her dragon made a snapping noise from his place around her neck. He didn't need a Dragon Amulet to know that he concurred.

He manages to restrain the urge to curse or shape his soul-hands into very rude gestures at them as he forces himself back onto his feet. At the very least, she had the grace to give him some assistance there, helping him up with use of hand-shaped, lilac constructs that could somehow grasp his ethereal hands.

The constructs felt cold and had a texture akin to glass. They even shattered like glass when they faded, the shards fading into light moments after the constructs broke apart. He looks at his hands for a few moments after they did, rubbing at where the hands touched his. Though the sensation had been a tad odd, it had been… nice. It had been years since he'd been able to touch anything with his hands.

Although, if she could do that in the first place…

"Remind me, why couldn't you have just made some sort of constructs to row for you?" he has to ask.

She gives him a flat stare. "Same reason you can't soul-blink everywhere."

He blinks. "It'll tear you in half?"

"It'll tear my mind in half."

"Seems like that wouldn't make much of a difference," he has to remark, making her flash him another glare. He grins at her. "What?"

"You know what? Fine. Next stop, we'll disembark, get a rowboat and start rowing for Tkaanie," she says sarcastically. "It'll be _fun_. We can even make it into a sing-a-long. Let's say… ' _Row, row, row your boat'_. I know! Chanting usually helps a person focus their powers. If I sing ' _Row, row, row your boat'_ on the way, I _should_ be able to focus myself enough to row us all the way to Edelia. How does that sound?"

Her smile resembled a Galeocerda's.

He points one soul-finger at her face.

"I'd soul-weave your mouth shut at the first ' _row'."_

She snorts. "That wouldn't stop me from humming it. Or getting my dragon to do it. Or…"

For a moment, she closes her eyes, brows furrowed ever so slightly. When she opened them, there was a faint ring of lilac glowing around her pupils, stark against the blue of her irises.

Then, all around him came a scream.

 _PROJECTING THE SONG DIRECTLY INTO YOUR HEAD_

He recoils and nearly smacks his head into the wall again, only barely stopping himself from doing so by use of his elbows.

His dragon snickered from his place around her neck though her expression remained resolutely neutral.

 _I'M SORRY, WAS THAT TOO LOUD?_

He tries to clap his hands over his ears and only remembers that they'd phase through his head only after they did so. Hands shoved into his head, stumps flattening his ears, he manages to glare at her.

"What the _hell,_ Hero? Get out of my head!"

"I wasn't _in_ your head," she protests. The shift from mental projection to spoken speech was a bit jarring but it was a definite relief not to hear her screaming at him from all angles. "I was just thinking loudly in your direction!"

"More screaming it in my direction…" He massages his ears with his stumps; his head was aching horribly. "I thought I was going to go deaf."

"But you _wouldn't_ have," she insists. "Really. If getting screamed at mentally could make you go deaf, I would've gone deaf ages ago." She flicked her dragon on the snout, making him snap at her finger before wincing. "Yep… still not deaf."

"Easy for you to say, ugh…" He rubs at his ears with the edges of his stumps but the ringing in his head refused to abate. "You're used to it."

"No one gets used to hungry dragons screaming for food in their heads 24-7," she says simply. "But… " she hesitates. "For what's it worth, sorry. I'm not used to projecting thoughts at people who aren't dragons."

"It's fine…" It wasn't, actually, but, after his freezer complaints, he felt a bit more willing to let her own gaffes slide. "Why couldn't we have just gone on your dragon, then? That seems a lot more logical than us sneaking aboard a merchant vessel as _sausage crates_."

"It's _hard_ keeping a dragon in Titan form," she explains, looking exasperated by the mere fact that she had to do so. "Draco's still just a kid; flying that far that fast would burn us _both_ out. You probably didn't invite me along just to have to carry us around after we burn ourselves out in flying there," Absently, she lets her dragon nuzzle her hand, lightly stroking under his chin with her thumb. "Besides, I'm pretty sure the Rose isn't going to let giant dragons just fly around the kingdom. We'd probably get shot down before we can so much as fly out of Greenguard."

That… made more sense than he'd expected. He says as much.

She sighs. "Yeah… I get that a lot…" she grumbles. "At least I'm not the one getting smacked around by fish this time around…"

The ship rocks beneath their feet, sending him crashing against the wall once more. The hard impact of getting smacked against the wall of the ship was disorienting but the follow-up smack by the steak on its hook was just _painful._

"Yeah… but now, it's me getting smacked around by meat…"

The steak covering his vision was momentarily engulfed in lilac light as she grasped it with her telekinetic hold. Her expression was unapologetic as she returned both steak and hook back to its original position.

"Better you than me, buddy."

"…why are we friends, again?"

She snorts. "You tell me. I don't even know why I still have any friends. I mean, most of mine seem to like locking me up in dungeons and making me kill stuff for days on end."

He stares at her. "… seriously?"

"Ever heard of Togicide?"

"…nope. I don't think I want to know either."

"Good. I don't like remembering it," she states with a shudder, eyes briefly taking a vaguely horrified gleam before regaining their usual light. "Honestly, though, it's just steaks. I don't see what's the big deal about all this."

He stares at her. "Hero…" he begins, weary exasperation coloring his tone. "I've been getting knocked around the ship, smacked by steaks, and covered in meat for the past _two hours_ now."

"Hey, look on the bright side! At least if you get bruised or whatever, you won't have to look hard for steaks to put on them. They're even cold, too!"

He stares at her. "Hero…"

She raises her hands, expression shifting into one of contrition as she did. Despite this, he could still see the upturned corners of her mouth peeking out from just over her dragon's tail. Her cheeks had gone red from trying not to laugh. "Okay, I _guess_ I can stop the steaks from smacking you around. Would that stop your complaining?"

The ship suddenly bucked beneath his feet, sending him staggering against the wall once more. True to her word, the steak that likely would've been en route to smacking him stopped just a few feet short, held back by a hand-shaped construct of pale, purple light.

She looks at him from the corner of her eye, pupils once against limned in lilac. "See? Isn't that better?"

He shoots her a glare. He was aching all over after two hours of getting smacked against the ship's walls. "I'm not sure if you've noticed but I'm still getting smacked around by the ship."

"Here's a tip, smartypants: _try sitting down,"_ she says, rolling her eyes once before focusing her efforts into returning the steak to its original position. _"_ If you keep your center of gravity low, there's a good chance you won't get knocked off balance as easily."

He looks down. The floors were covered in chunks of gristle, meat, and bits of bone, and stained red and dark from both melted ice and juices from the meats hanging about. As he watched, a sausage fell out from one of the boxes in the corner to join its fellows on the ground, before getting squashed by a crate as it skidded from its place, jerked around by the movements of the ship as it rocked on the waves. The sausage's expiration left bloody chunks of meat smeared on the floor, the meat having been forced out of its casing and out into the cold. The casing seemed to ask him. 'Why?'.

He looks at her. "… You have noticed the floors around here, right?"

"Oh, come on, it's just a little meat! If it were on your plate, you'd be hungry for it."

"And if it were in my clothes, I'd be sticky with it," he replies, sighing. "Look, Hero, I'm not sure if you can tell, but it's a lot easier to be casual about this when you're literally floating above it all."

She huffs, exasperated. "Oh, _fine,_ I can help with that too _._ Let me just – "

With a flick of her hand, a mop, a sponge, and a pile of rags seemed to materialize from out of nowhere. With a little urging, her dragon flew off of her shoulders and blasted the floors with a water-attuned laser, the attack leaving puddles in its wake. Another flick of her fingers sent the mop, sponge, and rags into action and soon, a massive circle on the floor was dominated by the ministrations of cleaning supplies as controlled by the faintest strands of lilac light. Foam and soap bubbles flew out from the perimeter being scrubbed, floating slowly and innocently outward, contrasting wildly with the carnage occurring not three inches away from them. Soon, it was all over, the action ending in the same way it had started: with a blast of water from her dragon's mouth. The dragon returned to coil about her shoulders with an air of smugness and the look on the his face seemed to ooze with self-satisfaction as he turned to regard him with wide, scarlet eyes.

Before him, a perfect circle now shone, clean from any sort of meat or meat oil, absolutely pristine in comparison with everything else. It was even dry, thanks to some rapid scrubbing and drying with one of the rags she'd brought out. It even sparkled, the whole of the ring she'd set herself into cleaning polished to perfection in the same amount of time it would have taken him to ask her what exactly was she doing.

That… was unexpected.

He looks at her. "How?"

Levitating the cleaning implements about her, she looked almost like some sort of cleaning deity, some sort of idol for janitors everywhere. Or at least, she would've if it weren't for the look on her face, which was amused, bemused, and exasperated in equal measures.

"I'm not sure if you've noticed but I've been adventuring for a fair while now." And wasn't _that_ an understatement. "It's part of the job, honestly. I've had to camp in some pretty filthy places and if you don't learn how to clean those places out, you end up sleeping with bugs in your armor. Believe me, that's not something you'd want to experience."

 _That,_ at least, was easy enough to do.

Cautiously, he sits. Tries to make himself as comfortable as he could be in a freezer, sitting against hard wooden floors, surrounded by steaks hanging on hooks and crates filled with meats of every variety, in a place as cold as a winter night that smelled of meat and blood and everything in between.

"Do you want to borrow my cushions?" she asks. "I brought my camping set. I suppose I wouldn't mind letting you borrow my sleeping stuff."

He raises a brow. "You brought a camping set?"

She gestures at herself with both her hands and her daggers, levitating the latter into pointing at her blades-first with the slightest twist of a finger. "Experienced adventurer," she says by way of explanation, and he supposes that that would suffice well enough as one.

"Give 'em here," he grunts.

With a twist of her wrist, a gigantic blue sleeping bag emblazoned with little crossed daggers, a small pile of cushions, and a bright red blanket seemed to explode from out of nowhere, leaving him crushed under their warm, campfire smoke-scented weight.

It was actually surprisingly pleasant.

He pushes his head out from under the sheets. "Where'd you been hiding all of these?" he asks.

She grins. "Standard issue adventurer inventory. Well, with a few upgrades. Handy, huh?"

"I'll say," he remarks. Now settled back in a thick sleeping bag and covered in warm blankets, he found himself surprisingly comfortable. "I guess this is as good a way to get to Edelia as any."

She smiles. "Better than a rowboat, right?" she teases.

"… Shut up."

She looks out of the window. The sun was still high in the sky.

"Hmm, seems we'll be here for a while."

"The trip to Tkaanie from Falconreach usually takes a few days, yes," he grunts.

"I brought some cards," she says, brandishing a deck that he knew had not been there before. "How do you feel about _Go Fish_?"

"Eh… why not." Better than doing nothing for all that time. He focuses his hands into corporeality and grabs the deck as she throws it at him, shuffling it with quick, practiced motions. "So, this is what'll be doing for the trip? Card games?"

"I guess," she says, shrugging. "Hey, look at it this way. At least we aren't getting mobbed by pirate-ninja monkees."

He stares.

"…what?"

She grins at him. "Nothing!"

And they played cards until the sun went down, during which he'd caught her cheating by way of her bond with her dragon, strategically levitated mirrors, and even simply peeking at his cards when he wasn't looking. During these games, he loses two pendants, a pocket knife, and has to promise to weave her a headscarf, and gains a bag of sweets from her stash, a loaf of bread from Serenity's, and a ring she'd looted from a treasure chest in return. It was far from the most _productive_ use of their time but he finds it enjoyable in its own right. He hasn't really had the chance to spend a night just… playing around with a friend since Edelia. It was nice.

And, as she kept on reminding him, it was a lot nicer than having to row.

 **END**

* * *

 **AN: *waves* Hi. So, I was looking through some files and it turns out that I have a bunch of fanfics for Dragonfable lying around half-finished. I figured I might as well finish 'em up. So, t'seems I'll be posting more over the week. I hope someone likes 'em.**

 **So, shipping. This is my favorite form of it, without a single stretch of doubt. Better than rowing, I say. (seriously, realizing they had to row over to the next continent at the start of the Void Ship saga just about made my day when I first realized it). I actually wrote another story similar to this a year or so back as a fill for a prompt on the kink-meme thing. That one had Warlic and was called the Literal Form. Check that one out, if you liked this. I'd repost it but I'm not sure if that's allowed.**

 **So, uh... I hope you enjoyed! R &R and all that.**

 **Edit: Fixed some things.**


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